News:
TransitRail on the Move: National Peering Program Footprint Expands With Turn-Up of Chicago Node
Cypress, CA — June 28, 2007 — The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) and Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP) today announced the expansion of the TransitRail commodity peering program’s national footprint with the activation of a connection point in Chicago, IL.
With the Chicago node now active and the national footprint in place, TransitRail members have more TransitRail connection points to choose from, allowing groups to engineer both service redundancy and improvement of network performance through reduced transit times.
TransitRail's US footprint is connected by 10Gbps waves provided by National LambdaRail (NLR). Each TransitRail node will be connected to, and accessible at, NLR points of presence throughout the United States, enabling NLR participants to leverage their membership in that organization even further through participation a national-level peering program.
In addition, the completion of the new node solidifies TransitRail’s role within the widely-respected community of Tier-1 national and international peering networks.
TransitRail’s positive reputation as a professional, engineering, and policy member within this community will foster new peering relationships among large Tier-1 networks and add to the effectiveness of the program for its participants, which can anticipate major savings with most cost-effective network peering.
A Case Study: Significant Cost Savings for Education Networks of America
For an R&E group concerned about the costs of their Internet connectivity, participating in TransitRail can spell significant savings over the higher-cost commodity Internet. Education Networks of America (ENA) is one such organization.
According to Bob Collie, ENA’s Senior Vice President of Technology and Chief Technology Officer, “TransitRail has proven to be an invaluable resource for us to meet the rapidly expanding bandwidth needs of the 4,500 K-12 schools and libraries ENA serves.” Adds Collie, “CENIC, PNWGP, and ENA are working together to leverage ENA's successful commodity peering program (and co-location facilities at major Internet facilities in Chicago and Ashburn) with CENIC and PNWGP's strong relationship with NLR and extensive peering along the west coast to create TransitRail's national presence.”
Collie was also pleased to report that, “ENA's school and library network members are already seeing the benefit of TransitRail's national scope as over 51% of our peak commodity Internet demand is served via our peering links.”
ENA’s experience mirrors that of other TransitRail participants including Oklahoma’s ONENet, Utah Education Network, Mid Atlantic Terascale Partnership, North Carolina Research & Education Network, MERIT Network, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, California’s CENIC, Pacific Northwest Gigapop, and more.
Both peers and participants are expected to grow significantly as TransitRail continues to expand its operations.
For more information about TransitRail, please contact info@transitrail.net.
TransitRail on the Move: National Peering Program Announces East Coast Connection Point
Cypress, CA - March 26, 2007 - The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) and Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP) today announced the expansion of the TransitRail national commodity peering program with the activation of a connection point in Ashburn, VA. The first TransitRail node to be activated east of the Mississippi, the Ashburn node has been put into service ahead of schedule and will soon be joined by a fifth node in Chicago, IL.
Together with the current nodes in Seattle, Sunnyvale, and Los Angeles, these two new connection points will give the TransitRail peering program a national footprint and enable research and education institutions to take advantage of low-cost network peering on a national scale. Already, the addition of the Ashburn node has enhanced the significant benefits available through participation in TransitRail.
The University of Utah and the Utah System of Higher Education is one of many particiants that has seen significant benefits from TransitRail. "We are pleased that TransitRail now carries up to 50 percent of the commodity Internet traffic for Utah education. It is cost-effective and provides excellent performance. A high-demand connection that required 25 hops can now be made in just six. This collaboration with the Utah Education Network, Front Range GigaPop and other higher education partners provides economy and a high level of service to our stakeholders," said Steve Hess, CIO for the University of Utah and the Utah System of Higher Education.
To an institution concerned about the costs of their Internet connectivity, participating in TransitRail can spell significant savings over the higher-cost commodity Internet. Oklahoma's OneNet, a high-performance network dedicated to education and government, has been a participant in the TransitRail program since December 2006 and has seen cost savings and usage far beyond what they anticipated. They and other networks participate in TransitRail via their National LambdaRail (NLR) connection, leveraging NLR's cutting-edge national infrastructure.
TransitRail's U.S. footprint is connected by 10Gbps waves provided by National LambdaRail (NLR). Each TransitRail node will be connected to, and accessible at, NLR points of presence throughout the United States.
TransitRail peers with major ISPs, and its current participant base represents a substantial segment of the research and education community within the United States. TransitRail is available to any interested R&E network groups.
Both peers and participants are expected to grow significantly as TransitRail continues to expand its operations.
For more information about TransitRail, please contact info@transitrail.net.
TransitRail on the Move: OneNet Joins and Sees Extraordinary Results
December 5, 2006 - What does a major regional research & education network do when it must continue to affordably meet the burgeoning demand for commodity Internet bandwidth? In the case of OneNet--Oklahoma's telecommunications and information network for education and government--the answer was to connect to TransitRail, a reliable, extensive commodity peering initiative designed to support the research and education networking community.
Rather than continuing to buy additional, expensive commodity circuits, OneNet easily connected to TransitRail through its National LambdaRail (NLR) point of presence in Tulsa, thereby leveraging an existing infrastructure with extraordinary capacity and capabilities. In less than a week, roughly 60% of the traffic on that segment transferred immediately to TransitRail thereby relieving potential contention on their commodity circuits.
James Deaton, OneNet's Chief Technology Officer stated “We expected to see maybe 100-200Mbps of traffic migrate to TransitRail. Instead, we were especially pleased to see roughly 500Mbps of traffic take the TransitRail path. Frankly, without this affordable TransitRail option, our end-users would have continued to utilize greater amounts of high cost backup commodity Internet connections while new services were negotiated with a commercial vendor. As it is, TransitRail put us in far better shape than we hoped."
"TransitRail was a logical solution to enable us to stay one step ahead of increasing demand," said Kurt Snodgrass, Vice Chancellor for IT and Telecommunications for the Oklahoma State Regents. "Based on the favorable TransitRail experience of R&E groups such as CENIC, Pacfic Northwest Gigapop, Front Range Gigapop, and Pittsburg Supercomputing Center, we were confident that we would see a substantial amount of our commodity traffic move to TransitRail. The actual results, however, far exceeded our expectations."
TransitRail is an AUP-free national commodity peering program for research and education networks. TransitRail is operated by CENIC and Pacific Northwest Gigapop. Current nodes are located in Seattle, Los Angeles, and Sunnyvale. Additional nodes in Chicago, Illinois and Ashburn, Virginia are under construction with planned activation during the first part of 2007.
TransitRail's broad U.S. footprint to Chicago and Ashburn will be connected by 10Gbps waves provided by National LambdaRail (NLR). Each TransitRail node will be connected to, and accessible at, NLR points of presence throughout the United States.
TransitRail peers with major Tier1 ISPs and Internet content providers.
Its current participant base represents a substantial segment of the research and education community within the United States. TransitRail is available to any interested R&E network groups.
Both peers and participants are expected to grow significantly as TransitRail continues to expand its operations.
For more information about TransitRail, please contact info@transitrail.net.
About TransitRail: www.transitrail.net
About OneNet: www.onenet.net
About NLR,Inc.: www.nlr.net
About CENIC: www.cenic.org
About Pacific Northwest Gigapop: www.pnw-gigapop.net
About Education Networks of America (ENA): www.ena.com